Port is great. I went through a big port phase in my mid-twenties. My mother once came into a 100-year-old bottle of the stuff, which ruined her on all other port forever. Lucky for me, I didn’t get to try any. Regretfully, I haven’t been drinking enough of it recently to justify a post, although I will be keeping my eyes open for the Jonesy.

But all this talk of Port got me thinking about my current favorite fortified wine: sherry.

And if I were going to recommend something to sip on all day while trapped with relatives in a house full of food, it would absolutely be sherry. Here is why:

– It goes great with all kinds of food.
– It is easier to prepare than a cocktail.
– It is less filling than beer.
– It has more alcohol than wine.
– It makes you look like less of a problem drinker than vodka.

I believe when most people think about sherry, they think about cooking sherry. There are also plenty of bad inexpensive bottles on liquor store shelves labeled as sherry. And that is really a travesty, because it keeps people from enjoying this lovely wine.

In fact, there are some stores where it is hard to find any good sherry at all. Many of the higher-quality producers also make mass quantities of plonk. So looking for big names isn’t a surefire path to bringing home a delicious bottle.

I highly recommend shopping with a trusted aid. For me that is F. Paul Pacult and his book Kindred Spirits.

I could write an entire post solely dedicated to all the styles in which sherry is made. But now is not the time. The two types of sherry I would recommend for spending time with the family and eating snacks before a big meal would be a light snappy fino or a slightly heavier nuttier amontillado.

To give you a better sense of these wines, here are two specific reasonably priced bottles (<$12) from larger producers. I have included snippets of Mr. Pacult’s reviews with each. They may be difficult to find, but if you have a trustworthy wine merchant, you can always ask them to suggest something similar.

So after you have finished up your last-minute shopping, but before you go home, make a run to the wine store. Maybe you will be lucky and find one of the two bottles I mentioned. Or perhaps you will find a passionate and knowledgeable merchant who can recommend a dynamite sherry.

When I used to handle the chalice at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Baltimore (very much worth a look for its Tiffany-designed Byzantine interior), I learned that the pastor’s favored communion wine was a California sherry.